Page 10 of The Accidental Ghost

“Ralph?” Shamus repeated.

The thought of finding out what happened to her suddenly became very real. Did she want to know?

As though he read her mind, Shamus asked, “Do you want to know?”

She closed her eyes and fought her tendency for flight rather than fight. “If it helps to get me wherever I’m supposed to be, I don’t have a choice. So, yes. I want to know.”

Sort of…

Shamus’s lips thinned as he blew out a breath. “This online article says you were found in your store yesterday in Brooklyn with a bullet wound to the chest. No suspects as of yet and no witness to the crime. However, the two men who own the sandwich shop next door, Break Bread, said there was an awful smell coming from your store and when they couldn’t find you, they alerted the police.”

Someone had murdered her?

Yet somehow, what truly horrified her was the fact that her body was just left to rot.

She’d stunk up the joint.

How embarrassing.

Chapter

Four

“I promise I’ll get more fairy dust. You won’t have to wear it forever. Just for the moment so we can all see you. They can’t help you if only I can see you, Ralph,” Shamus said gently.

“Is she bitching?” Nina asked, with a nudge to Shamus’s ribs. “I said I’d go get it. Tell her to shut the fuck up and quit being such a baby. It’s just a sheet, for shit’s sake, and a good one at that. Egyptian cotton, five-hundred thread count. It’s been washed. What’s the fucking problem?”

Ralph sighed and held up her arms, using her hands to try to adjust the eyeholes they’d cut into one of Nina’s sheets so she could see. To no avail though. She couldn’t actually touch the sheet.

Her hands flapped around, slicing recklessly through the material.

“Tell Nina I’m sorry. I don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth. I really don’t. I truly appreciate her help, their help, and yours, too, Shamus. I’m trying to adjust, is all. I mean, I did just find out someone shot me.”

That’s what the article had said. She’d been shot, but no further details were available yet.

Who would shoot her? Why would they shoot her? Had they been trying to rob the store? She’d only had twenty bucks in the till, for Pete’s sake! What could they possibly want from her?

That stupid article did little to nothing to help with any information. Marty’s suggestion to go to her place made the most sense, but how could she do that if she couldn’t leave Nina’s lair?

Also, there was the gunshot wound. How she’d missed a hole in her chest for an entire week was a mystery to her. That she hadn’t seen it was a testament to how bewildered she’d been for the last seven days.

Maybe it was because she had a dark cable-knit cardigan over her blouse, or maybe she was simply losing her mind, but the hole was there, right under her heart.

Now that she could see it, it felt like a gaping wound.

“Tell her we said it’s okay, Shamus. No one understands the confusion that comes with this kind of life-altering change the way we do,” Wanda said. “No need to apologize.”

Her heart warmed. As she and Marty scurried off to leave instructions for their children with Archibald, Ralph couldn’t help but think Wanda was so nice.

But without their chatter, that left Ralph with her thoughts and this hunk of a pointy-eared silver fox. “So what do we do next about finding out why I haven’t ascended or descended or whatever?”

“Have you tried to leave the castle at all, Ralph?”

She paused as she stood behind Shamus at the wide steel-front doors. “Will that help determine what kind of ghost I am?”

“It’ll help determine whether you’re tethered here. If something drew you here, like an item or another ghost, even.”

Sighing, Ralph asked, “Another ghost?”

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